Category Archives: Friends

Penman No. 474: Looking Back and Letting Go

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Penman for Sunday, June 1, 2025

AS ANY friend who’s had the privilege of being invited to his Makati home quickly realizes, Ambeth Ocampo is more than the engaging public intellectual we all know, whose Looking Back series has made history come alive for young Filipinos. He’s also an inveterate collector of rare Filipiniana—books, ephemera, art, and historical objects—all of which come with the territory he works in. 

There have been many Filipinos of a similar bent—the legendary Alfonso Ongpin and the late Ramon Villegas come to mind, as well as the more contemporary Jimmy Laya, Melvin Lam, and Edward de los Santos, among others—but the way Ambeth has amassed his collection is noteworthy on its own, as it folds the personal almost imperceptibly into the professional. 

It comes pretty close to the classic prescription for murder—means, motive, and opportunity—all captured in his classic story of how he stumbled on and picked up Emilio Jacinto’s silver quill, a writing prize, from an antiques dealer who didn’t bother to learn what it was and let it go for its scrap value. (Having as much of Ambeth’s desire for antiquarian junk but with much less knowledge and certainly less means, I’ve often joked, between the two of us, that Ambeth’s the scholar and I’m the scavenger.)

Jacinto’s quill, along with a trove of other historical treasures from Ambeth’s personal collection, will be up for auction on June 7 at Leon Gallery. They include Juan Luna’s silver belt, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s walking stick, an official copy of the Malolos Constitution, Philippine maps from 1616 and 1647, and the Noceda and Sanlucar Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala from 1860, among many others.

Knowing how precious these objects were, I had to ask Ambeth more about them, and this is what he said.

What made you think of selling these treasures now? Surely it can’t be easy letting go of them after being their caretaker all this time?

Over the years, I have come to the realization that collecting is not the hobby it used to be. As a boy I collected stamps and learned geography, history, and the culture of foreign countries in the process. I was fortunate that my father’s company had an international correspondence, so every week his secretary would send me a batch of envelopes to sort out.

I started collecting Filipiniana books in the 1980s, stocking up from the National Bookstore Quezon Boulevard branch bargain bin where I completed my Nick Joaquin essay collection because they cost one peso each. After school, I went to the Heritage Art Center in Cubao that I learned only years later was the site of the old Philippine Art Gallery. It was a ramshackle grouping of rooms upon added rooms made from old house parts that Mario Alcantara, the owner, bought from mambubulok. I had a favorite nook where I did my homework and when bored I would explore the rooms that I think gave me an eye for art and the ability to choose what I thought was good or not.

Looking back my collecting, and my life, has been the happy intersection of skill and opportunity. Napoleon once said “ability is nothing without opportunity.” I have always seen collecting as a responsibility. Collecting significant Filipiniana is not a hobby. It is not an investment. Collecting is a responsibility, the collector a steward who preserves the collection for the next generation. 

The objects I put at auction have enriched my life in many ways and I think they will enrich the life of their next steward. Some of the lots like the Malolos Republic one-peso banknote and the printed copy of the Malolos Constitution have been tucked away in a drawer. If I drop dead tomorrow these might be carelessly thrown away as trash. They should go where they are better appreciated. Collectors de-accessioning keeps the market alive and buzzing.

Let’s get this out of the way: it’s none of our business, but what will you do with the money?


Since I am not a dealer the material reward does not really factor in the equation. I have sold other things before at cost or even at a loss, just thinking that my gain was the enjoyment I got chasing after them and acquiring them. What will I do with the proceeds? When I started selling my rare Filipiniana I thought that instead of having shelves of books, maybe I should just sell and use the proceeds to buy one or two incunabula or samples of early Philippine printing from 1593-1640. Instead of caring for a whole library I will just care for half a dozen very important books.

How did you start out as a collector of historical objects? How and where did you find them? Aside from Jacinto’s pen, what was your most serendipitous find?

Collecting historical objects came naturally from my work as a historian. I would find things in used bookstores and when supply was still plentiful in the Ermita antique shops. One of the serendipitous finds was the cedula or residence certificate of a certain Julian Felipe, a musician from Cavite. It was in a heap of old papers, initially priced at one hundred pesos. I haggled it down to fifty, paid, and ran away. 

Another time my favorite antique dealer brought a “European painting” of a Virgin and Child to my home. I looked at it and knew it was Philippine. When I opened the frame to inspect the painting, hidden under the frame was the signature of the Filipino master Mariano Asuncion (1802-1855). The silver belt of Juan Luna and the bank draft in his name were acquired from Mario Alcantara. It came with the famous trove of paintings inherited by Grace Luna de San Pedro that are now in the National Museum. While everyone was going wild over the paintings, I spent many afternoons browsing the boxes of memorabilia that included the bloodied uniform Antonio Luna wore when he was assassinated, the palettes and brushes of Juan Luna, the memorabilia, some architectural plans of Andres Luna de San Pedro, and much more. I offered to buy the palettes and brushes and the painter’s smock but Mario said these were destined for the National Museum. There was also the last letter Juan Luna wrote to his son from Hong Kong, written a day before his death, not only was this letter significant, Luna did a watercolor of Hong Kong Harbor on the first page of the double-sided letter. All I could afford was the silver belt that came with Luna’s black suit that Mario said was also destined for the National Museum. Unfortunately, the Heritage Art Center burned down and with it all these memorabilia.

Do you or can you separate the collector from the scholar? Did the collecting happen naturally as a consequence of the scholarship?

The collecting grew and was enriched by my research and scholarship. If I had a PhD in Math I probably would not have recognized these odds and ends now considered treasures. I have been divesting over the years. A large part of my Filipiniana collection was donated to the Center for Kapampangan Studies, Holy Angel, Pampanga. All I keep at home are the books I need for work for teaching, lecturing, and writing, but now that I am retired from Ateneo (but still employed on a post-retirement appointment) it is easier to let go. 

The full catalog of Leon Gallery’s Spectacular Mid-Year auction can be accessed on its website at https://leon-gallery.com. 

Qwertyman No. 146: A Shift in the Tide

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Qwertyman for Monday, May 19, 2025

THE PUNDITS have spoken and all kinds of analyses have been made about the recently concluded midterm elections, with most observers remarking on the surprise victories of Bam Aquino and Francis Pangilinan in the Senate and of Akbayan and ML in the partylist, as well as the steep decline of the hard Left alongside the continuing strength of the pro-Duterte forces. 

Some read the results as a sharp repudiation of the administration, others as a resurgence of the “Pinklawan” moderates, and yet others as just more proof of the Pinoy voter’s kabobohan in keeping the same old names in power. What’s clear is that it was a mixed outcome, giving everyone something to either crow or complain about.

At my favorite poker haunt, where I’ve been playing with a bunch of regulars for nearly twenty years, the table talk inevitably came around to the election results. The people here—mostly young and but with many seniors, mostly men, mostly middle class and urban (you need some money to play poker)—represent for me a good cross-section of our society, perhaps statistically imperfect but more grounded in gritty reality: neither scholars nor ideologues but homeboys coming from both Manila and the far provinces, brought together by nothing grander than chasing after a straight flush and pocket aces.

Maybe to rattle their opponents or to deflect attention from the cards, these guys can talk up a storm about politics. My general strategy is to shut up and smile to keep them guessing; although they know me as a UP professor and could presume on my liberalism, I’ve decided that listening rather than arguing would yield me a truer picture of the Pinoy mind, and protect my hand.

Back in 2022—to my great dismay—that mind was overwhelmingly pro-“Uniteam.” Despite all the information floating out there about Marcosian martial law and Dutertean bloodlust, my fellow pokeristas and even the dealers loudly proclaimed that they were voting for BBM, hushing the few Kakampinks in the room. 

Last week, the atmosphere in the poker place was decidedly different, one of great amazement and relief. There was surprise–but also joy—that Bam and Kiko won. The biggest buzz revolved around Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto, less over the win that everyone expected than his political future, which everyone agreed should include the Senate and at least the vice presidency, the only concern being his youth (not that he was too young for the job, but for the legal minimum age). No tears were shed over the loss of popular entertainers and media personalities. Not much was said about BBM and VP Sara, who seemed strangely irrelevant, despite the fact that the midterms were effectively a proxy war between them.

Now of course you could say that a gambling den is hardly representative of the Filipino people, but then gamblers are among the most hardboiled cynics you can find, not easily given to idle wonderment. (And then again, poker wouldn’t thrive without foolishly hopeful patsies like me—called “fish”—who go all-in on a pair of deuces, hoping to catch a trio. Remember Anton Chekhov’s description of gamblers as people who “go out for their daily dose of injustice.”) That a shift in the tide seemed to ripple on the surface of these poker faces was encouraging. I suspect that these dehadista sentiments were there all along—but have now been emboldened to surface, and I can see this happening all over the country: it’s okay to hope, to bet on the long shot.

It’s probably a measure of how desperate we’d become, more than anything else, that progressives all over the country are ecstatic to have won two out of 12 seats in the senatorial race, never mind that the other winners were mostly your usual crowd of trapos and Family Feud participants.

After previous wipeouts and defeats that, we were convinced, only massive fraud could have engineered, these signal victories—along with a smattering of other partylist and local wins—have now raised our hopes for a more enlightened electorate and a resurgent opposition.

The question is, who will that opposition be, and who and what will it be opposing? Frozen out of the Palace and facing impeachment, VP Sara has claimed the mantle of opposition leader in her post-election statement. That’s “opposition” in the trapo sense of the word—another faction of the same ruling elite, another version of greed and lust for power.

It should be clear by now that a real, viable, and electable opposition can come only from the middle forces that are beginning to regain their footing after the hard loss of 2022. The sad but not surprising defeat of the more radical Gabriela and Bayan Muna partylist groups—which some see as the triumph of Red-tagging—puts the burden of the fight against corruption and for good governance on Bam Aquino, Kiko Pangilinan, Risa Hontiveros & Co., because it’s something that no one else in the government, certainly not the Dutertites, have the moral authority to undertake.

For this battle, and in preparation for 2028, this opposition has to adopt and master coalition politics—or rather their supporters have to learn how to unite, to maintain focus on the big picture, and to yield ground when necessary for the greater good.

For example, as I noted in an FB comment, Luke Espiritu and Heidi Mendoza turned in good performances—but they could have been better if some of our “liberal”-minded friends didn’t junk them on single issues: Luke for supposedly being an “abortionist” and Heidi for being a “homophobe.” Until we can get beyond our enclaves and agree on broader issues, the real evil will win. Sometimes we look for perfect candidates, people who align with all our principles, check all the boxes, lead blameless lives. But everyone’s flawed—any writer from the Greek playwrights onward knows that. 

We hand-wringers can be our own worst enemies. As a recent opinion piece in the New York Times put it, “Members of the educated elite… tend to operate by analysis, not instinct, which renders them slow-footed in comparison to the Trumps of the world…. Such elites sometimes assume that if they can persuade themselves that they are morally superior, then that in itself constitutes victory; it’s all they need to do.”

We have three years to see what was really achieved in May 2025, and if, like a good pokerista, our middle forces will know how to play a weak hand from a strong position, with a single-minded audacity and resolve.

Qwertyman No. 141: Purity and Perfection

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 14, 2025

LAST WEEK, former Commission on Audit Commissioner and senatorial candidate Heidi Mendoza—a staunch exponent of good governance and nemesis of crooks—drew flak from some people who would have been her natural allies on the liberal side of the political spectrum: the LGBTQ community. At issue was her expressed disagreement with same-sex marriage, as a personal belief she did not seek to impose on anyone else. That still wasn’t enough for some same-sex marriage advocates, who announced their withdrawal of their support for her candidacy.

Of course both Heidi and her detractors have a right to their opinions, but I can’t help thinking that the only people chuckling at this situation are avatars of neither good governance nor gender rights, but the enemies of both.

Heidi Mendoza hasn’t been alone in this position of being seen to have been right on many things but wrong on—well, something, but something big enough to destroy and erase whatever good they’d done before. “Being seen” is important here, because it’s a matter of perception; like beauty, “wrongness” is in the eyes of the beholder. 

Today’s social media is populated by such beholders who can’t wait to see personalities make what they deem to be mistakes, and often to point those out with all the hawkish attentiveness of dancesport judges and the ruthless certitude of Pharisees. 

I’m sure you’ve come across many more such instances of people whom you thought you knew and whose ideas you had largely agreed with, only to find them—suddenly one morning—the object of the nastiest vitriol the Internet can be capable of dishing. Once blood is spotted in the water, the sharks start circling and a feeding frenzy follows. Many comments simply echo the previous one, seeking to be even louder and crueler; little attention is paid to context and nuance.

Witness what has happened just these past few weeks:

A political scientist and commentator who had grown a substantial following for his liberal positions got skewered for comparing Mindanao to sub-Saharan Africa. Never mind his explanatory reference to a scholarly study which made that comparison based on certain criteria. In the verbal shorthand of a TV interview, the soundbite was all that mattered to many.

An expert on infectious diseases—globally recognized in that field—was savaged for opining that former President Rodrigo Duterte should have been tried by a Philippine court instead of being bundled off to The Hague. Never mind that the good doctor made it clear that he was against EJK and all the wrongs that the old man is now in the dock for. Netizens seemed to take it against him that he tried to explain how many Mindanawons felt about Duterte, and that he had worked under that administration to help stop Covid during the pandemic.

A prominent journalist and exponent of ethical journalism—also a fervent convert to evangelical Christianity—upset and lost many friends when he declared his disagreement with the idea of transgender athletes competing with their biological counterparts. (It was a view shared by a former student of mine, a lawyer and legal scholar of the same religious persuasion.) This man’s longstanding commitment to the truth and to justice seemed trivial compared to what he had to say on this one issue.

No doubt these issues are centrally important to some, the litmus test by which they judge people’s character and their “true colors.” But which color is truly “true”—the mass of blue or the spot of yellow? And what effect does single-issue politics have on the big picture?

I wonder what all those Arab-Americans who withheld their vote for Kamala Harris because she didn’t sound pro-Palestinian enough are thinking now that the man they effectively helped return to power is speaking unabashedly about Gaza as “an incredible piece of real estate.” I know that some continue to insist that they did the right thing in holding on to the one issue that mattered to them, and of course it was their right to do so. But I can’t help thinking of all those Fil-Ams who trumpeted the Orange Guy’s alleged support for the rights of the unborn, in disregard of all the pain and misery he’s causing to the born. 

Me, I’m as liberal as they come, with all of that word’s pitfalls and contradictions. I believe in civil liberties and human rights, in free speech, in freedom from censorship, in the equal application of the law for all. I also support divorce, same-sex marriage, abortion rights, transgender rights, and gun control. I stand neither with Zionists nor Hamas but for peace for the people of Israel and Palestine. I believe in and pray to God—a God who is good and just—but mistrust organized religion and both extreme Right and Left (indeed, anyone who claims to know how life should be lived) and resist doctrine of any kind, whether Church, State, or Party. If you’re my FB friend and you find any of these too reprehensible for comfort, feel free to unfriend me, or to stop reading this column. 

I have to admit that, following major upheavals like the 2022 election and the Duterte arrest, I’ve lightened my roster of Facebook friends by offloading a number of characters whose preferences I loathed. I didn’t have any qualms about that, because they were “friends” only in the shallowest Facebook sense of the word. (I find Facebook useful, but blame it for its degradation and devaluation of “friendship.”) Most had never interacted with me, and neither of us would miss the other.

But there are friends you have in real life who are arguably worth more than their politics or religion. By this I don’t mean that they fatten your bank account or make your life easier (although some might); if anything, they remind us how much more complicated people and life can be, and how ideological purity or moral perfection may ultimately be less important (and certainly more boring) than the challenge of finding some common ground and surviving together. In continuing to talk with them, we talk with ourselves and those parts of us still capable of doubt and wonder. 

So disagree as I may with her on this particular point, I’m voting for Heidi Mendoza. I suspect I stand a better chance of convincing her to support same-sex marriage than of straightening out the crooks and dimwits eager to take her place in our already benighted Senate.

Qwertyman No. 140: The City of Stories

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 7, 2025

THIS PAST weekend, I was down in Dumaguete City with National Artist for Literature Resil Mojares, historian Ambeth Ocampo, and scores of other writers for the 2nd Dumaguete Literary Festival. At my age, I’ve frankly tired of going to literary festivals, conferences, and workshops, preferring to work quietly at home—Dr. Mojares apparently feels the same way—but we couldn’t resist the allure of Dumaguete, a city central to the development of Philippine postwar literature, and always well worth visiting on its own for its gentle charms.

I personally have much to thank Dumaguete for, for what it contributed to my own budding literary and academic career. Early in 1981, shortly after I had returned from my first visit to the US, I received an invitation from Dr. Edilberto Tiempo to join the Silliman Writers Workshop which he and his wife Edith—the poet and future National Artist—had started two decades earlier upon their own homecoming from America. 

I had dropped out of college for a decade by then, and was working at NEDA, which had sent me to the US for an observation tour. What that trip to the American Midwest—mainly the campus of Michigan State in East Lansing—did for me was to rekindle my interest in learning. Dr. Tiempo’s invitation could not have come at a better time: a summer devoted to talking about poetry and fiction at Silliman University felt dreamlike, and by the time the workshop ended, my head spinning with magical lines from Robert Graves, I had resolved to quit my job, go back to UP, and just study, write, and teach for the rest of my life. And that’s what happened.

I wasn’t alone in that kind of transformative experience; as the country’s oldest writers’ workshop, the Silliman summer workshop became a virtual rite of passage for young writers, especially in English (some writers in Filipino have also attended, with works in translation). Silliman itself (older than UP by several years) has produced many of the Philippines’ finest writers, aside from the elder Tiempos—among them Ricaredo Demetillo, Aida Rivera-Ford, Merlie Alunan, Leoncio Deriada, Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Elsie Coscolluela, Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, Marjorie Evasco, Lakambini Sitoy, Artemio Tadena, and Myrna Peña-Reyes. It also has a strong performing arts tradition, contributing the likes of National Artist Eddie Romero, Gilopez Kabayao, Amiel Leonardia, Junix Inocian, and Elmo Makil, among others.

For all these, Dumaguete has been formally nominated to be designated as a UNESCO City of Literature—one of many such distinctions listed under UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network program that was launched in 2004 to recognize and celebrate cities around the world—350 of them form more than 90 countries to date—for their signal achievements in Crafts & Folk Art, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, Music, and Media Arts. So far, 53 cities in 39 countries have been named Cities of Literature—among them Barcelona, Heidelberg, Iowa City, Lahore, and Norwich. (Iloilo has already been named a City of Gastronomy, and Quezon City is vying to be designated a City of Film.) With the Philippines serving as this year’s Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Dumaguete’s recognition as a UNESCO City of Literature will raise our global cultural profile even higher, and let the Philippines be known for more than Boracay, Manny Pacquiao, and Imelda’s shoes.

Leading that charge for Dumaguete is Silliman University literature professor Ian Rosales Casocot, one of our best fictionists and co-director of the festival with Gayle Acar. Working with the Dumaguete City government, the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Buglas Writers Guild which Ian heads, Ian notes that aside from developing writers, “Dumaguete itself has been a constant subject of many literary works, from novels to poetry, from essays to plays. It is high time that Dumaguete is recognized for its role in shaping literature in our corner of the world.” The well-attended Dumaguete Literary Festival, now on its second edition, offers proof positive of that city’s continuing centrality to our literary life and culture. 

We had been invited to share our views on various aspects of Philippine literature in this age of artificial intelligence. I joined a panel of writers dedicated to that specific topic—or, as they put it, “Can AI Win a Nobel Prize for Literature?”—which happened to be something I’ve given much thought to.

Understandably, there’s been a lot of fear and anxiety—even outright hostility—generated by the emergence of AI in nearly every aspect of human life and society. Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazawa, for example, has forsworn the use of AI in his work, calling it “an insult to life itself.” While it has been hailed for its contributions to such fields as medicine and criminology—shortening diagnostic procedures and sharpening digital forensics—AI’s application to less mechanical endeavors is more fraught with both ethical and technical questions. 

In previous lectures and again in Dumaguete, I showed how—at this point—AI poses little threat to the writer of truly good and imaginative literature, by yielding execrable responses to such prompts as “Write a paragraph about a summer night in Spanish Manila in the style of Nick Joaquin.” It’s worth a laugh, but I’m not sure how long we’ll be laughing; AI’s present ineptitude simply means it has a lot to learn—and it will, with the kind of training it’s being fed off our books, our texts, our manner of writing. It will only be a matter of time—I’d say less than a decade—before AI can mimic the best of global writing. For me, the best response is neither to hate nor to ignore it, but to understand it and employ it for helpful uses we have yet to find. (We’re already tapping AI every time we use Google, and no one seems to mind.) It should even be possible for authors to creatively interact with AI in what I’m calling a game of prompts.

What we can reasonably certain of is that while literary styles can be copied, the human imagination is far richer and stranger than we think. AI tends to homogenize; the good creative writer strives to be unique. Like Dumaguete, there’s a whole city, a labyrinthine cosmopolis, of stories in every writer’s mind to be discovered and explored.

Penman No. 473: New Light on (and from) the Philippine Short Story

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Penman for Sunday, April 6, 2025

FEW MAY have noticed, but this year, 2025, marks the centenary of what has been widely acknowledged to be our first classic short story in English, Paz Marquez Benitez’s deathless “Dead Stars.”

As I’ve often observed as both a writer and teacher of Philippine literature, there’s probably no literary form more popular among Filipinos than the short story and its predecessors—myths, legends, folktales, and such stories that draw on the power of narrative to tell and teach us something about human life. 

A lot of this has to do with the fact that people and cultures everywhere have made use of stories to make sense of things—to establish causality in human actions—often as a way of prescribing and also proscribing certain behaviors. Stories were there to learn from, like the biblical parables, Aesop’s fables, and the creation myths. The more exciting and entertaining the stories were, the easier the learning happened. Even the mere recognition of oneself in a story that could have taken place a thousand years ago in a place across the planet makes our lives seem more meaningful.

In the Philippines—as it did in the West, where the modern short story took form—the short story was a staple of prewar weekly magazines like the Sunday Tribune, where a story written by an American author would be matched by a local story during what our early literary scholars like Leopoldo Yabes would call our period of apprenticeship. This was in English, but the short story in Filipino (then Tagalog) and other Philippine languages had developed even earlier, and continued (as it continues) to explore new forms and material.

Why the short story and not the novel? That’s another long discussion to be had, and I’ve addressed it in a lecture titled “Novelists in Progress,” but the short of it is that, well, we Pinoys like things in small doses (think Nick Joaquin’s “heritage of smallness”), and the short story satisfies our craving for a touch of fiction and fantasy in our ordinary lives. We’re not marathoners, but great sprinters; we’re not summiteers or navel-gazers, but masters of the street and alley. 

And so, over the past century, important anthologies of the Philippine short story have been published, tracking the development of the genre and its practitioners, from Yabes’ landmark Philippine Short Stories 1925-1940 (a project continued by Gemino Abad for 1956-2008) to Isagani Cruz’s Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century (2000). Outside of English, Mga Agos sa Disyerto edited by Efren Abueg came out in 1964, proclaiming new directions for Tagalog short fiction, and the much-needed Ulirat: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines was published in 2021, edited by Kristine Ong Muslim.

But the 21st century is now a quarter of the way through, and just in these past two decades or so, a fresh bumper crop of brilliant new stories has built up, awaiting harvest.

Five years ago, an American friend named Gerald “Jerry” Burns—a fellow academic and a scholar of Philippine literature in English, now Emeritus Professor at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire—decided to do just that: review the best of the newest Philippine short stories and produce a selection with which to introduce them to the world. He needed a collaborator, and having worked with Jerry earlier when he was a Fulbright professor at our English department in UP, I agreed to co-edit the volume with him. Because of our backgrounds, our stories would be mainly those written in English (and the excellent Ulirat had already covered much more ground in the other Philippine languages than we ever could) but Jerry wisely insisted that we should have at least some representation of non-English stories in translation in the book, if only to lead the reader to explore more in Ulirat.

The selection process was predictably long and bruising, with all the political, aesthetic, and practical considerations that go into anthologizing, but in the end we came up with 18 stories written by both familiar and fresh names, from within and beyond the Philippines, including the diaspora: Dennis Andrew Aguinaldo, Dean Francis Alfar, Mia Alvar, John Bengan, Ian Rosales Casocot, Richard Giye, Vicente Groyon, Ino Habana, Carljoe Javier, Monica Macansantos, Perry Mangilaya, Doms Pagliawan, Ma. Elena Paulma, John Pucay, Anna Sanchez, Larissa Mae R. Suarez, Lysley A. Tenorio, and Socorro Villanueva. We also found an agreeable and supportive publisher, Milflores Publishing, fortuitously run by Andrea Pasion-Flores, herself a fine fictionist who understood the need for a new anthology like this, especially on the threshold of the Philippines’ participation as Guest of Honor in this year’s Frankfurt Buchmesse.

The book’s title, What Light It Can Hold: The Philippine Short Story in the Twenty-First Century, was suggested to Jerry by an encounter with the piña weavers of Kalibo, Aklan, and a caption he saw that said: “How fragile a single thread of piña is, how delicate, but look how much light it can hold.” He explains that “What Light… is intended to recognize the limited capacity of the Philippine short story in this period to offer any widespread or definitive illumination of the nation’s life and culture. At the same time, a more expansive understanding of that title is possible. For the short story, as will be suggested in the next pages, is a signature Philippine product, too. And these slender narratives, fashioned by their makers with a skill, patience, and devotion comparable to the piña weavers’, bring what light they can hold to vital areas of contemporary Philippine and larger human experience.”

No anthology project will be without its perceived failures and omissions, and Dr. Burns and I remain fully open to criticism in that respect. But we believe the sympathetic reader still stands to profit from both the selections and the introduction, penned largely by Jerry, that makes salient observations on the changes that have taken place in this most favored literary form of ours over the past century. Happy reading! (What Light It Can Hold is available on Lazada and Shopee.)

Penman No. 472: Manila Pen Show at Manila Pen

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Penman for Sunday, March 9, 2025

FOR A group that began in our Diliman front yard with less than 20 people almost 17 years ago, the Fountain Pen Network-Philippines (FPN-P) has come an awfully long way. With over 14,000 members online, meeting physically by the dozens in regular “pen meets” held in hapless cafes and restaurants, and thousands more informal recruits among families and friends, FPN-P should really register soon as a partylist devoted to “spreading the joy of handwriting with fountain pens.” We have active chapters in Baguio, Bacolod, and Davao, among other places; quite a few members even reside abroad but keep in regular touch through the group’s FB page.

As I’ve often written here before, the allure of fountain pens lies in their rediscovery by digital natives as a means of self-expression—of recovering one’s uniqueness in a universe homogenized and anonymized by computer code. Our ranks include Supreme Court judges, Cabinet undersecretaries, artists, professors, doctors, and lawyers, but most of our members are young professionals in their twenties and thirties for whom writing in cursive is itself an adventure. There are probably hundreds of thousands of pen fanciers (as they used to be called) around the world, mainly in the US and Europe, but what distinguishes FPN-P is its youthful vibe and the infectious fanaticism of its members.

Some fall in love not just with the pens but with penmanship itself, and become calligraphers. Others grow enamored of inks and papers of a bewildering assortment—inks that shimmer and sheen, combining lustrous gold with a deep oceanic blue, and papers that range from silken smoothness to almost parchment-like toughness.

Next weekend, hundreds of these penfolk (and the general public) will converge at the 5th Manila Pen Show that will be taking place March 15 and 16 at—fittingly enough—the Peninsula Manila. 

Top pen makers and dealers from Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia have been coming to the MPS, attracted and impressed by the level of sophistication—and the deep pockets—of Filipino pen collectors. While the MPS has pens for everyone at every price point—from the low hundreds for students to six figures for the big guns—Filipino pen collectors and users at any level have been known for their deep knowledge and obsessive familiarity with all aspects of the hobby. 

They can tell you how Japanese artisans produce the various kinds and textures of urushi resin that renders pen surfaces impermeable to even acid. They can discuss minuscule but hundred-dollar differences in Parker Vacumatics from the 1930s, or argue passionately for vintage Pilot Myus and exotic inks like the perfume-scented De Atramentis.

This year’s MPS will not only bring sellers of pens and assorted writing paraphernalia, but also feature workshops and panel discussions on topics ranging from nature journaling and nib care to Art Nouveau and Deco pens (and, most intriguingly, “Your Pen and Your Brain: A Love Story,” to be conducted by Gang Badoy Capati). A group of advanced collectors will discuss the finer points of pen connoisseurship (including that point when pens stop just being writing instruments but become jewelry or even art). 

I’ll be on the Art Nouveau and Deco panel, but this time, instead of discussing pens (which others will do this time, all of them experts at particular models and periods), I’ll talk about the peripherals and accessories of the writing trade—the desk pen sets, inkwells, and ink blotters of the kind you would have seen in a typical office desk of the 1930s. 

As with past Manila Pen Shows, nibmeisters or professional pen repairmen will be around to fix that Montblanc nib you dropped on the kitchen floor or your Lolo’s gunked-up Sheaffer that’s been lying in a drawer since he died. One thing most people don’t realize is that most pens, no matter how old, can be fixed (I myself routinely revive 100-year-old Parker Duofolds among other vintage pens in my workshop—you’ll need some special skills and parts, but it’s not rocket science).

You don’t have to be an FPN-P member or even a current fountain pen user to come and enjoy the show. Indulge your curiosity and feel free to see, touch, and test the pens on display (with the exhibitor’s permission, of course, as some pens may require very careful handling). Most sellers will take credit cards or online payment. There will be a modest charge for entry and for the presentations, but all funds raised will be donated after expenses to the Save the Children Philippines, FPN-P’s sponsored charity for the past MPSes. You can find more details about the show at https://manilapenshow.helixpay.ph.

(Image thanks to Raph Camposagrado)

Penman No. 471: A Promise to Keep

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Penman for Sunday, February 9, 2025

Now and then we come across stories of foreigners who fall under the spell of the Philippines so completely that wherever else they go, the Philippines and its panoply of wonders—its mangoes, its waters, its sunsets, and above all its smiling people—stay with them, urging them to return, in spirit if not in person.

One such visitor was my good friend Julie Hill, who with her late husband Arthur first came to Manila in 1968 on a mission to help improve Philippine education, among other concerns. Almost six decades later, after having traveled the world and settled in America, Julie’s thoughts and affections remain bonded to this country and to its future. In the twilight of her life, she has decided to gift poor but bright young Filipinos with a life-changing opportunity to study at the University of the Philippines, from the forthcoming sale at auction of two paintings by National Artists HR Ocampo and Ang Kiukok.

Born in Alexandria, Egypt to Greek parents, Julie Hill went on to a fulfilling life in the United States and around the world with Arthur, who represented the Ford Foundation in the Philippines. Forced to leave Egypt when Nasser took over, Julie found a scholarship for her master’s degree in chemistry at the University of Minnesota. There she met Arthur, an Australian taking his PhD in Education and Mathematical Statistics. 

The two fell in love, married, and embarked on a lifelong adventure around the world—to Western Samoa, Thailand, Indonesia, and Afghanistan, where Arthur’s expertise in education and agricultural development was much sought after. Arthur passed away in 2002, but Julie went on to her own career as an international marketing executive for Lucent and later AT&T. Since retiring at their home in Rancho Sta. Fe, California, she has written and published five books of travel and memoirs—all of which I edited after being introduced to her by our mutual friend Jimmy Laya, turning our business connection into a long and dear friendship.

From the first of those books, A Promise to Keep (2003), come many vivid impressions of a country and society transitioning to modernity, troubled but brimming with energy and promise. Arthur got busy working with UP and the International Rice Research Institute, among others, and the Hills became good friends with the rising technocrats of the time—Cesar Virata, Gerry Sicat, and Jimmy Laya. It was Laya—who remains close to Julie—who introduced her to the local art community.

“The art scene was vibrant,” Julie would write. “Manila, a centuries-old entrepot, was rich in art and culture, and we were privileged to visit many private art collections….

“Art galleries flourished. A self-exiled painter stormed into town and set new price ceilings. The audience increased. So did the column inches devoted to art in the newspapers and magazines….

“The Luz Gallery in Makati was run by Arturo Luz, a leading painter, known for his high standards of professionalism. His gallery gained the trust of the public and the artists. The Solidaridad gallery and bookshop was located in Ermita, run by novelist Frankie Sionil Jose. Solidaridad was the middle ground between the established artists exhibiting at Luz and smaller galleries where new talent was championed. You could find superb examples of prints, drawings, miniatures, relief metal sculptures, collage, photographs, and paintings all over Manila.

“We were interested in meeting the artists and visiting their studios, but were reluctant to pay the gallery prices. If we liked the work of a particular artist, why not buy directly from him or her? This was how we searched for and found the home of Hernando Ocampo.”

“Hernando Ocampo was a pure abstract expressionist with a daring originality in his paintings. His work was unmistakably Filipino, ascribing this national character to his unique, tropical colors. A typical Ocampo painting is not unlike a honeycomb, a complex weave of color and tone with each individual cell suggesting a large, more real life form. His work is tropical and warm and suggestive of symmetry. The colors and shapes seem to dance before the eyes. His home in Maypajo was a mecca for friends, admirers, and collectors. He had an open house on Sundays. Good food and hard and soft drinks were ready for guests. Visiting Ocampo, we felt welcomed not only by the artist but also by his family. We commissioned a painting. Sketches were drawn; we followed the progress of our painting with our weekly Sunday visits, and sampled the wonderful pancit, that ubiquitous Filipino noodle dish, that was offered. We photographed the progress of his work. He completed the ‘Song of Summer’, a mastery of color in 17 different shades of red. It would hang proudly in our home in California, and continue to provide intense, pleasurable excitement, another reminder of our times in the Philippines.” (Note: Ocampo’s sketch and color guide for the painting will go with the artwork at auction.)

The Hills left Manila for Indonesia shortly after martial law, but on a return visit in the early 1980s, their old friends at the Ford Foundation presented them with another painting by another Filipino master, Ang Kiukok.Julie recalls seeing several works by accomplished Filipino painters in the foundation office, purchased back when they were far more affordable, and this may have been one of them. Like the Ocampo, it traveled with the Hills around the world all the way to Rancho Sta. Fe, where I have been visiting Julie over the years (our daughter Demi conveniently lives nearby in San Diego).

It was during our most recent visit there that Julie brought up the idea of donating her two paintings for the benefit of poor UP students. A lifelong but quiet supporter of students as far away as Mindanao and a staunch believer in the transformative power of education, Julie also honored me by anonymously (but no more) endowing the Jose Y. Dalisay Jr. Professorial Chair in Creative Writing at UP, over my embarrassed pleas to put it in her name.

This time, she wants the money to go to UP’s poorest—specifically, those exceptionally bright and mainly provincial students who, against all odds, pass the UPCAT but fail to enroll, lacking the means to afford the cost of living on a UP campus. We’ll need to work out the mechanics, but this will go much farther than professorial chairs in changing Filipino lives.

“I had a privileged education in Alexandria and was fortunate to receive a scholarship for my graduate education in America,” Julie says. “During our years in Manila, Arthur and I developed a deep affection for the people of the Philippines, and I am hoping that this donation will contribute to creating a generation of talented and hopeful Filipinos who will serve their country well.”

The Ocampo and Ang Kiukok paintings will be sold at auction by Leon Gallery on February 22. I pray that generous buyers will help Julie keep her promise to the Filipino people.

Penman No. 469: Seniors and Their Stories

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Penman for Sunday, December 8, 2024

I HAD the privilege of attending the private launch of a book in Makati recently, a book titled Bridges of Memory produced by a group of seniors who had each contributed their poems, stories, and essays to the collection. None of them was a professional writer; I gathered that they came from distinguished backgrounds in banking, law, public service, and other pursuits. 

Prior to publishing the book, they had been mentored by an accomplished and experienced writer, the San Francisco-based poet Oscar Peñaranda, who just happened to be an old friend of mine. Oscar was in the US when the launch took place, so he sent a congratulatory video. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this was already the “Sunshine” group’s (so named because they meet at the Sunshine Place for seniors in Makati) second such book.

As you might expect, the book contains the authors’ musings on life, love, and loss, the funny with the sad, the joyful with the tragic. The styles and the quality of the writing predictably varied, but the enthusiasm was palpably even, with all the contributors present eager to share their work.

At that very same moment, way across town, another mass book launch was being held at a major university, where one of the featured books was a long and distinguished biography that had partly been edited by me. I had also been invited to that event, but chose to attend the Makati one despite the Christmas traffic, because I had the feeling that it would somehow be a more enjoyable occasion, at least for me, as it would put me in touch with writers of a gentler disposition.

Having been caught in a whirlwind of literary activities over the past two months—from the Frankfurt Book Fair to the Palanca Awards to the PEN Congress—you’d think that I’d shy away from a small book launch, but aside from the fact that some of the authords were friends, I wanted to show my support for this kind of more personal writing and publishing that we too often take for granted as self-indulgence.

I’d seen books like this before, the output of writing groups, barkadas, high-school chums, and fellow alumni. They’re often triggered by an impending milestone, like a 50th anniversary or a grand reunion and homecoming.

The professional crowd might think of such volumes as vanity projects published by people who could never put out their own books. But then that’s the whole point: one person’s vanity is another person’s self-empowerment, and such private publishing reclaims the right to self-expression from the academic and commercial gatekeepers. The works they contain may not win any literary prizes, but they are as honest and heartfelt as writing can get, and satisfy the most basic urge that impels all good writers: to use words to give shape to one’s thought and feeling, and to share those words with others so they might think and feel the same way. They’re written neither for fame nor fortune, but to leave some precious memories behind for a very specific audience—although some pieces may be of such merit as to be more widely appreciated.

I’ve always said, even in my own creative writing classes at the university, that I believe that every person has at least one good story in him or her—and that it’s my job as a teacher to bring that story out. And people know this, too—many of them are dying to tell their story, but don’t know where and how, and who will listen. That’s particularly true for digitally-challenged seniors, who don’t have access to blogging, and who use Facebook for little more than “Happy Birthday!”

I’m particularly taken by the fact that these books are produced by seniors, who are increasingly being left out of a social world ruled by schemes and products for young people. Even within families—let’s admit it—very few grandchildren now have the time nor the patience to listen to their elders’ stories, much less to ply them with questions; they’d rather scroll through their social media than ask what a typical summer vacation was like half a century ago, or what people did before there were cellphones, computers, and satellite TV.

Years ago, fearing we would lose her soon because of her illness, I’d asked my mother to write down her memoirs in notebooks which I still keep. As it happened, she recovered magnificently, miraculously, and is approaching 97, still strong and alert, albeit a little slow. She walks every day, plays games on her iPad, and navigates Netflix on her own. When she’s staying with us (we siblings share her company), Beng and I pepper her with questions about her childhood in their village in Romblon, where she rode a horse and scooped fish out of the plentiful sea. The youngest of a dozen children, she was the apple of her father’s eye, and the only girl he sent to Manila for high school and college at UP. They had a rice mill, and snakes roosted in the large straw bins that kept the unhusked rice. But the snakes were to be feared much less than the beautiful encantos that came down from Kalatong on fiestas and lured their victims to join them with offerings of black rice. How could you not like and want to retell stories like that?

Our seniors are a treasury of stories to be told. They just need to be asked, encouraged to write, and published.

(For your copy of Bridges of Memory, email marketing@sunshineplaceph.com.)

Qwertyman No. 126: The Young Dodong Nemenzo (2)

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 30, 2024

THIS WEEK I continue with excerpts from my interview with the late Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, on his recollections of his genesis as a young intellectual and activist at the University of the Philippines in the 1950s.

“It was all a popularity contest. Everything just seemed to be socials. Homobono ‘Bon’ Adaza, who was then the editor of the Philippine Collegian, tried to organize a socialist club with me. Bon even put out an announcement for a meeting. Bon and I were contemporaries, but he was a year older than me. I think I was a senior by then. I was living with my father on campus, since he was a professor here. We had a cottage in Area 2, then we later moved to Area 14. Our whole family was here. 

“It was because of my readings. I had already read the history of the socialist movement, and I was fascinated by that so we formed a socialist club. I think just three of us turned up for the meeting—the third was Princess. After that we were always together. We weren’t going steady yet then. We continued being friends because she was the only one who listened to my sermons on socialism. You ask her, but I don’t think she had any association with socialism before. We had just that one meeting. 

“Bon was eventually expelled from UP, but I had a hand in his election as chairman of the Student Council and editor of the Collegian twice because we were friends. The editor was elected from among the topnotchers of the exam. 

“The UPSCAns didn’t have a candidate who passed the exam, who were all frat boys. Bon landed in the top three, but he had no supporters. I bargained with the UPSCAns because they held the majority. So I used my vote in the council to push for Bon. Eventually he became editor of the Collegian. 

“Together with the chairman of the council and also the leader of the UPSCA, we decided to hold the first student strike. This was because for one and a half years, UP had no president, with Enrique Virata serving as acting president. It came down to a stalemate between Vicente Sinco and Gonzalo Gonzalez. Squabbling behind them were Jose P. Laurel, who represented the Senate on the Board of Regents, and Carlos P. Garcia who was supporting Gonzalez. No one could get the majority. I was on that strike. I proposed a solution arguing for the Board to take decisive action but also endorsing Salvador Lopez, whose essays I loved, for president. The UPSCANs didn’t care who won, as long as we had a president. 

“Our strike paralyzed the campus for a couple of days. It didn’t last as long as the Diliman Commune, but it was the first—and it was my first mass action. I was the one who was planning the tactics. 

“I was really looking for allies when I met this labor leader who used to be the secretary-general of the Federation of Free Farmers. [We’ll call him Hernando for this account, pending verification of the name—JD.]He claimed to be a socialist and he seemed to have read books on socialism. He was a layman. He was the one who introduced me to labor leaders such as Ignacio Lacsina and Blas Ople. They had a group of young people who revolved around Lacsina, and they met at his office in Escolta. 

“But I continued my reading. Sometimes I felt alienated because they weren’t Marxists. They were just for nationalization, and I felt more advanced than they were. There were other students there, but they were not as involved as I was. When the Suez Crisis exploded in 1957, the Americans intervened in Lebanon. We decided to picket the US embassy. We were  already using the word ‘imperialism’ then. Prominent labor leaders were there, including Hernando. When we got there, the labor attaché invited us inside to have breakfast with the US ambassador. I didn’t want to go in, but Ople and Lacsina thought they could change US policy by convincing the ambassador, so we did. I was utterly disgusted by that experience. 

“I was due then to go to US for my PhD, on a Rockefeller fellowship at Columbia University. Our demonstration took place just a few months before I was to leave. I was an instructor in UP and my college wanted me take up Public Ad, but I wanted to get out of that so I chose Political Sociology. I had become an admirer of C. Wright Mills who worked there and I wanted to work with him, only to find out that he didn’t want to handle graduate courses. 

“I already had a room at the International House in Columbia. Everything was prepared. I already had my visa. But on the day I was supposed to leave, the embassy told me that I could not leave. The consul general showed me the immigration law, which banned the entry of communists, anarchists, drug addicts, and prostitutes. 

“I think they had some earlier information about me because Lacsina later told me that Hernando was a CIA agent. He said that once, he and Blas Ople wanted to invite Hernando for a drink so they could get him drunk and then ply him with questions to extract the truth. What happened instead was that Blas got drunk first so nothing happened. Then he lashed out at Hernando and told him to his face that he was a CIA agent, and cursed him for blocking me from taking up my scholarship in the US. Looking back, I think Lacsina was right!”

Dodong Nemenzo eventually went to the University of Manchester in the UK for his PhD in Political History. He returned to serve as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, chancellor of UP Visayas, faculty regent, and 18th president of the University of the Philippines. He married Ana Maria “Princess” Ronquillo and they had three children—one of whom, the mathematician Fidel, became chancellor of UP Diliman.

Qwertyman No. 125: The Young Dodong Nemenzo (1)

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 23, 2024

IT WAS with deep sadness that we received the news last week of the passing of Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, the staunch Marxist, nationalist, and former president of the University of the Philippines. My wife Beng and I are spending Christmas with our daughter in the US and being an all-UP family, we all knew Dodong and were much affected by his loss. Beng had been a student of Dodong’s at UP, and I was privileged to serve under him as his Vice President for Public Affairs twenty years ago. But long before this, I had met him as a student at the Philippine Science High School where his wife Princess taught us History; he came to pick her up in the afternoon in his Volkswagen Beetle whose door was emblazoned with the Bertrand Russell “peace” sign.

We will be missing the many memorial events that will surely be held in his honor these coming days, so I thought of recalling Dodong in a different way from what most of his colleagues and comrades will be speaking about him. More than ten years ago, I interviewed Dodong for a book I sadly have yet to finish, and he spoke with me about his life before he became the fighting ideologue everyone now remembers him to be. Let’s hear him in this abbreviated excerpt:

“We went back to Cebu after the war. Everything was still in turmoil. I enrolled at the Miraculous Medal School, a Catholic school, and completed my third and fourth grade there. By the time I reached fifth grade, Cebu Normal School was opened so I graduated from there. After sixth grade, I spent a year in the seminary in Cebu. That was my parents’ plan ever since I could remember. I was the only boy among three children, and the eldest. My parents were devout Catholics, and they considered it an honor when a member of the family became a priest or a nun. Since I was an only boy they wanted me to become a priest. I stayed there for only a year, and then I quit. That was probably the beginning of my radicalization. The seminary back then was run by Spanish or Vincentian priests who were supporters of Franco. They looked down on Filipinos and despised Rizal. 

“I went to the University of San Carlos. It was a Catholic school but my father was unhappy with the Science instruction. Our science textbook used the question-and-answer method and my father didn’t like that. He examined my notebooks every day and corrected what my teacher said. He got mad when we were taught creationism, and he lectured me on Darwin and evolution. I answered my teacher back and the principal reported me to my father for my heretical tendencies. My father decided to free me from this nonsense and transferred me to the Malayan Academy, a private non-sectarian school that had very good teachers. I finished near the bottom of my class, failing in Conduct and Tagalog. 

“I entered UP Diliman in 1953. The rule then was that you were exempted from the entrance exam if you had an average of 82, but my average was around 77 so I had to enroll in a summer institute that was like a backdoor into UP if you passed 6 units there. I didn’t know what course to take. My father didn’t want me to take up Law and wanted me to become a scientist like him, but I reckoned that if I did that, I would always be compared to him and come up short. So I chose a course called AB General. 

“The advising line was a mile long. Jose ‘Pepe’ Abueva, a friend of my father’s, passed by and saw me in the queue. He asked after me and I told him that I couldn’t think of a course I really wanted. He tried to sell me on Public Administration, but I didn’t like to serve in a bureaucracy. He said there’d be a lot of opportunities abroad, scholarships, and if I did well I could join the faculty. He had a lot of arguments, but the one that persuaded me was ‘If you join Public Ad right now, I’ll sign your Form 5 right away, and you won’t have to join this crowd.’ 

“That’s how I ended up in Public Ad. When the dean of Business Administration tried to recruit me and my (Pan Xenia fraternity) brod Gerry Sicat who was then in Foreign Service to go into Economics for our master’s, Pepe Abueva again swooped in and told me to take up an MPA instead, and to join the PA faculty immediately. So I became a faculty member in my senior year, just before my graduation, as an assistant instructor. I probably had the longest title in UP: ‘research assistant with the rank of assistant instructor, with authority to teach but no additional compensation.’ I really wanted to teach, but had no actual assignment. I only took over the classes of professors who went on leave. 

“I never joined the UP Student Catholic Action or UPSCA. Well, maybe for one year, but I was never active and then I got out of it. I joined only until I met an UPSCAn named Princess. We always met in Delaney Hall. We were together in the student council. She was representing Liberal Arts, I was representing Public Ad. I joined in 1955, my third year, along with Gerry Sicat, Manny Alba, and Jimmy Laya. I became a liberal and distanced myself from UPSCA. 

“I idolized (Philosophy professor) Ricardo Pascual. I was looking for a cause, but these liberals were just fighting for academic freedom with no purpose. It seemed empty. I was under the influence of Pascual for some time, but we had no advocacy. I joined a short course in Social Order at Ateneo on the papal encyclicals on labor. My liberalism and my growing social consciousness merged and I started reading Marx and Huberman on my own, to find out what we were fighting for. There were a couple of professors like Elmer Ordoñez and SV Epistola who according to Bill Pomeroy had already reached that level of consciousness, but when he left they became liberals, they weren’t really organized.” (To be continued)

(Photograph by Rick Rocamora, used with permission)